The curious Tory relationship with numbers and mathematics

Quick last post before I go to bed ready for going down for the march tomorrow! Just posted this on my blog - please see the original at http://skwalker1964.wordpress.com/2012/10/19/the-curious-tory-maths-inability-police-nhs-economy-and-more/ for the many links to sources.


This week, in PMQs, there was a very curious exchange between Ed Miliband and David Cameron – one that was very revealing about a particular Tory failing of which I’ve become more and more aware since the coalition took office. Here’s the transcript from the Hansard record of the day:

“Edward Miliband: I want to turn to one group in particular who are losing their jobs directly as a result of the Government’s policy. A year ago, the Prime Minister told me at the Dispatch Box:

“There is no reason for there to be fewer front-line officers.”—[Official Report, 30 March 2011; Vol. 526, c. 335.]

Will he tell the House how many front-line police officers have lost their jobs since the election?

The Prime Minister: The percentage of police officers on front-line duties has gone up. That is the key.”

“The percentage of police officers on front-line duties has gone up. That is the key” – yes, you’re reading that right. According to David Cameron, it doesn’t matter how many police officers there are – just what proportion of them is on the front line. By that logic, he could reduce the number of police to one, give him a truncheon, a whistle and radio, put him on the beat - and we’d all be fine, because we’d have 100% of police on the front-line!

This is just the latest example of many that show something revealing: the Tories have a very curious relationship with numbers.

It occurred to me as I was considering this post that, if you’re a regular reader of my blog, you might possibly conclude that I’m just a polemicist – someone determined to find anything I can to use against the Conservatives. Well, I make no secret of the fact that I despise pretty much everything the Tory party stands for – and especially the neoliberal version we’ve been cursed with since Thatcher – but it’s all solidly grounded in facts and figures. When I write, I make sure every statement is backed by sources, with links to supporting evidence, and properly applied and interpreted.

If only that were a standard to which our current ‘leaders’ adhered. But, for a party that likes to think it owns the ‘competence’ proposition – that it knows what it’s doing, even if it’s the nasty party – the Tories have a very odd inability to count, let alone use numbers properly.

We’ve already seen that David Cameron thinks a single police officer is enough to maintain law and order, as long as he’s on the ‘front line’. Let’s take a look at a few other examples, both by Cameron and by his henchmen. It won’t by any means be an exhaustive list – there are far too many for me to cover even the ones I know about in a single post, and there are, beyond question, many, many more that I could find if I could stomach it. But it should be a revealing list nonetheless.

A ‘million net new jobs’?

I’ve covered this in another article, so I won’t go into every detail here, but it’s definitely a key one – as it demonstrates Cameron’s willingness to lie, not just to his own party conference and to the public, but even to Parliament for the sake of a good soundbite.

Cameron claimed, after last month’s employment statistics were released, that ‘one million net new private-sector jobs‘ had been ‘created’ under his government. And yet he knew - ONS put the warning all down the side of the statistics so he couldn’t possibly miss it - that almost 200,000 of the million jobs were reclassified from the public sector. Not net, not new – just moved from the public sector total to the private. Yet he claimed it in Parliament, repeated it to his party conference and on TV, and had it used by various of his subordinates on various occasions. Curious.

NHS funding

In his speech to the Tory conference, Jeremy Hunt claimed that the government was honouring its commitment to protect NHS funding by increasing spending by £12 billion. That would be an increase of over 11% on the current budget of £108 billion. Impressive, eh?

However, challenged about this figure immediately after his speech by Andrew Neil on Neil’s ‘Daily Politics’ show, Hunt had to admit that the real increase in the NHS budget for next year was… £63 million. Not an 11% increase. Not even a 1% increase. Not even half a percent. An increase of less than 0.06% – when the NHS is facing not just a rate of inflation more than 40 times higher, but also the pressure of an ageing and rapidly increasing population. Curious.

Nurses

In his speech to the conference, Cameron claimed that the government had increased clinical staff – but he had to be careful with the categories he listed. Strangely, since the first thing most people would think of when you mention healthcare is nurses, they were conspicuous by their absence from Cameron’s speech.

And no wonder. Nurse numbers have fallen under the coalition by at least 4,527, with more up-to-date numbers indicating a reduction of 6,000.

Some increase, eh? Curious.

The mystery of the benefit claimants that didn’t disappear!

As I wrote just the other day, during the same PMQs in which Cameron made his ridiculous ‘percentage police’ claim, he also lauded a fall of 170,000 in the number of unemployment benefit claimants. Yet even the ‘adjusted’ ONS statistics that governments prefer to the raw numbers state that the claimant count rose by 228,000 - a discrepancy of 398,000.

Curious.

What’s good for the PCC is no good for the unions?

In the House of Lords debate on 11 October, government spokesperson Lord Taylor of Holbeach outlined the government’s expectation that turnout for the Police and Crime Commissioner elections in November would be only 18%.

Labour peer Lord Tomlinson asked why, if an 18% turnout was good enough to legitimise the PCC elections, the government was planning to impose different standards on union ballots for industrial action:

“Would the Minister agree with me that there is a fair amount of inconsistency of thought when members of the same Government justify low turnouts for important elections and yet demand of people who have nothing to do with government, such as the trade unions, that they should get 50% turnouts in their ballots?“

Lord Taylor’s response was classic: “I think that is a different matter altogether.”

Curious indeed.

The rich pay their share?

On the BBC’s ‘Question Time’ programme on the 28th of September, Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg defended the Tory policy of cutting taxes for the rich by asserting that the richest 1% pay their share because they pay 26% of the tax revenue total.

On the same show last week, Grant Shapps rounded this up to ‘almost 30%’. That’s a lot of rounding – using the same proportions, 86 is almost 100!

But in 1997, the top 1% paid 21% of the tax revenue total. That means that today their total contribution has gone up by 23.8%, from 21% to 26%. However, during the same period the incomes of the top 1% increased by 60%. That means that their contribution has actually gone down – so much for paying their share!

Curious.

I could go on. I could talk about how the Tories managed to turn the official disability benefit fraud rate of 0.5% into an implied 30%. Or about how they treat us all like idiots by claiming we have a worse deficit than Greece, or that they’re trying to save the country from insolvency when we weren’t insolvent by any definition of the word. Or even about how they think they can grow the economy by sucking money out of it, or raise more tax by cutting tax rates (don’t make me Laffer!).

But I won’t. Too much of a good thing is still too much, so they say. And I think we’ve got plenty to chew on already.

More than enough, in fact, to leave only two possibilities open:

a) The Tories have a relationship with numbers that is so ‘curious’ that it represents a severe case of the numeric version of dyslexia.

b) They have no conscience at all about lying, cheating, distorting and misrepresenting the facts – as long as they think there’s political or financial gain in it, and preferably both.

Which do you think it is?

The explanation is simple, they don't care whether we believe what they say, or not.

The moat is full, and the drawbridge is raised.

Another good thread skywalker, just to let you know I did not believe them from the beginning when they where coming out with "The Mess Labour left us". They have always used LIES SPIN and anything else they can think up off the top of there heads (which are just empty vessels) so keep your truthful threads coming skywalker and well done.

I have watched the up-rating bill in the H.O.C. and have come to the conclusion none of the Tory MPs cabinet and back bench came across maths in there travels through the education system. My reason for this is plain they have voted to put a 1% cap on benefits with the excuse they can not give benefits a higher increase than the public sector workers so let us have a look at the difference J.S.A is £72.00 per week public sector worker doing 35 hours per week on minimum wage of £6.19 = £216.93 before tax and NI
So J.S.A. of £72.00 per week 1% = 72p rise per week that is if your over 25 years
Public sector worker £216.93 p/w @ 1% = nearly £2.16 per week it would come out more if that public sector worker was earning the Living wage

Since most of the Tory MPs would have went through the education system when it was the Thatcher/Major gov't, I think Mr Gove would have plenty of guinea pigs for his baccalaureate school reform but doubt that any of them would pass with flying colours if todays debate is anything to go by, not one of them could understand plain English or maths for that matter my own opinion they did not want to understand and worst of all they did not care. When they join the Tory party they are put through the party machine which takes out there heart and replaces it with a swinging brick removes their humanity and turns them into uncivil shyte we now see on a regular basis on the gov't benches in the H.O.C.

I have come to the conclusion the Tories are getting the low paid sick disabled and the unemployed to pay down the deficit, as for the unemployed they are quick to forget that Cameron and Diddy Giddy cuts, that have cost some people there jobs if not for the cuts they would still be employed and paying their taxes and NI. What of the bankers and the hedge fund managers the ones that have caused this misery they are still getting their huge salaries and abusively high bonuses well the ones at the top of banks do, because they sacked the tellers and any other back room staff that did not create the crash but there the ones that had to pay for it along with the normal working man/women.

Given what I have learned over the past two and half years of this gov't, they are making sure the bankers and the City of London do not have to pay the tax payers back the money that Gordon Brown had to borrow to bail their sorry asses out of the bloody mess they created, plus Labour has to take the blame for the huge deficit which contains the money borrowed to bail out the banks, and the Tories know this but being a bunch of imbeciles that bray like donkeys when the Labour MPs are getting the blame for the deficit, it just proves what a nasty bunch of idiots they are.

As for the private sector that does not want to pay there staff/workers a decent wage or pension so they used this to drive a wedge between the private and public sector and nearly succeeded, and the private sector bosses will never pay the living wage reason they would not make as much profit to stick in there off shore accounts or in some cases not have enough to put into Tory party funds and the Tories have a cheek to say that the Unions are the Labour parties paymasters when its big business that are there paymasters that is why there is no regulation in the banks so if the banks wanted to go tho the CASINO for another night out there is nothing in place to stop them, and why so many private companies have gotten so many of the gov't contracts, the 49% of our NHS to the private health sector is just one example there will be more and not until the Labour party win the next G.E. will we find out the extent of the Tories underhand dealings.

Speaking of maths Red, your beloved Brown was able to spend £1 for every £5.20 borrowed, not sure about you but that doesn't make for very good economics to me?

tlttf wrote:Speaking of maths Red, your beloved Brown was able to spend £1 for every £5.20 borrowed, not sure about you but that doesn't make for very good economics to me?

Do you never LISTEN to your party it was for every £4.00 spent £1.00 was borrowed , so before you open your mouth and let your belly rumble check your facts first tittf.

Facts have been checked Red, have yours?

tlttf wrote:Speaking of maths Red, your beloved Brown was able to spend £1 for every £5.20 borrowed, not sure about you but that doesn't make for very good economics to me?

Brown was able to spend £1 for every £5.20 borrowed
Is there perhaps a link to that late-breaking news?

Good post, Redflag.

The percentage payrise is one of the biggest cons ever perpetrated on ordinary workers. Whilst it appears at first glance fair to say everyone in the company gets a 5% pay rise, it has in fact helped to perpetually increase inequality and hand more wealth, and power, to a minority. A 5% payrise would see someone on £100pw being £5 better off whereas someone on £1000pw would be £50 better off. A £50 rise is 1000% more than a £5 rise.....and so the gap between rich and poor will ever widen.

Percentage pay rises are in reality wage reductions for those at the lower end of the pay scale.

So why such enthusiasm for a "Flat-rate Pension", one has to wonder.

sickchip said: Percentage pay rises are in reality wage reductions for those at the lower end of the pay scale.

Also the percentage pay rise is compound, which makes the diffarential even bigger.

tlttf wrote:Facts have been checked Red, have yours?

How much is this shower of dick heads having to borrow ?? a lot more than the Labour party did my figures came out of the mouth of the ~Tory minister so you have just confirmed what we already knew the tory party is the party that tells the bloody biggest pack of LIES to the Brittish public. If I was you I would read the facts and figures that Ivan has given you before you post again.

Your right red, the debt is going down, however were still being soaked because of the interest rates were having to pay, were screwed either way.

Though nevertheless Gideon Osborne borrows more and more money every month. Perhaps you could let HIM have the benefit of your wisdom, tlttf.

Totally wasted on any politician OW, though thanks for putting me forward.

tlttf wrote:Your right red, the debt is going down, however were still being soaked because of the interest rates were having to pay, were screwed either way.

The deficit is not going down. It went up and Osborne had to use an accounting trick with cash that wont be gained for ages and whose amount is anything but certain (and is widely considered to have been overstated) in order to make a spurious claim of even a small reduction.

".... an accounting trick with cash that wont be gained for ages...."

Counting eggs before they're hatched. Oddly enough can be regarded as Director fraud if a Company does such a thing to hide its insolvency.

oftenwrong wrote:".... an accounting trick with cash that wont be gained for ages...."

Counting eggs before they're hatched. Oddly enough can be regarded as Director fraud if a Company does such a thing to hide its insolvency.

Cameron has been committing fraud since May 2010 OW.

Original with links is at http://wp.me/p2sftc-4H6

Tories' Big Lie on 1% benefit uprating

While I was going through this month’s Office of National Statistics (ONS) employment statistics for my monthly analysis of what you won’t see in the headlines, I came across a very interesting piece of information. This info doesn’t bear directly on employment/unemployment levels, but it does bear very directly on the government’s narrative on benefits – the same narrative that Cameron, Osborne, Duncan Smith and co have been using as their chief justification for their decision to cap benefit rises at 1% for at least the next 3 years. And this information catches them all in a Big (Fat) Lie.


Watch out Dave – your nose is growing! Tory Big Fat Lie on benefit ‘unfairness’

For example, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, arguing for the government’s then-planned (and now implemented) 1% cap on benefit rises, said:

It is unfair for benefits to rise at a faster rate than wages

while David Cameron said on Twitter:

The Commons vote to limit benefit rises to 1% while pay is only rising at 1% is fair.

Whatever you think of that argument (and I think it’s a nonsense), it only stands up at all..

if pay is only rising at 1%.

But the ONS earnings stats (click here if you want to download the spreadsheet and see for yourself) tell a completely different story.

According to the January ONS release, the average pay increase over the past year (up to Nov 2012, the latest month covered) was 1.5% in the private sector and 1.9% in the public sector. Woeful, pitiful increases, and employers (including the government) should be ashamed. But still 50% and 90% higher, respectively, than the cap imposed by the government on increases to benefits.

Don’t forget that 60% of benefit claimants are working people, so the government is compounding the effect on those people of pathetic pay increases by capping their benefit increases at a rate well below inflation. And the effect on unemployed people claiming the UK’s far from generous unemployment benefits is even worse – we must not let this government play ‘divide and rule’ by setting working people against the unemployed, most of whom would love a job but who outnumber the available vacancies by more than 5 to 1.

You might think, ‘So what? That’s just a single year – the overall story is probably different.’ You’d be wrong.

The graph below, which I created using the ONS’ figures for percentage pay rises since 2001 (the first year in their table which shows a percentage figure), shows the average pay increases (excluding bonuses, so that the figures are not bumped up by obscene bankers’ bonuses etc) for the private and public sectors, and the resulting overall average.



As you can see, sometimes the public sector has fared better, and sometimes the private sector – but in only 1 year out of the last 12 has average pay risen by less than 1%. In only 2 years – the 2 years of this Tory-led coalition – has it been below 2%.

Until the government forced through its ‘uprating bill’, benefits were increased in line with inflation – or, to be more precise, with the ‘Consumer Price Index‘ (CPI) inflation rate, since this is normally lower than the alternative ‘Retail Price Index‘ (RPI) rate. The graph below, which I took from a BBC news site article, but which uses ONS figures, shows the RPI and CPI rates since 2000:



That tells an interesting story – but since the 2 graphs don’t cover exactly the same period and are not to the same scale, you might have difficulty spotting what the story is. So, because I like to be helpful, I’ve stretched my limited graphics skills to the limit to re-scale and crop the inflation graph, and to remove the irrelevant RPI blue line (as cleanly as I can), so that it matches the period and scale of the pay rise graph:



What leaps out – or should – is that benefits increases have lagged substantially behind pay rises in almost every year covered by both sets of data.

If benefit rises in line with inflation have outstripped pay rises over the last couple of years, then it can justifiably be argued that this is merely a much-needed ‘catch-up’. But what the graph also shows very clearly – and which anyone who considers him/herself a ‘striver’ needs to understand is this:

The Tories call themselves ‘the party of the strivers, of those who work hard and do the right thing‘ – but 3 of the 4 worst years for the pay-packets of working people have been under the Conservative-led government.

We’ve caught Cameron and co in several blatant lies, any one of which merits the descriptors ‘Big’ and ‘Fat’:

Benefit claimants, with their inflation-linked rises, have not outstripped wage rises except in a very short period – and even then only because of the actions and decisions of the government. On the contrary, for most of the past 12 years – and probably further back – pay rises have consistently beaten benefit rises.

Pay has not risen by only 1% over the past year or at any point under this government, as David Cameron has repeatedly and emphatically claimed.

Last, but not least, the claim – repeated ad nauseam – of Cameron and co to be on the side of the ‘strivers’ is the most pungent bullshit imaginable. Working people have suffered risible pay increases, in spite of steep rises in the cost of housing, fuel and other essentials, while the Tories continue to claim ‘we’re all in it together‘ as they cut taxes for the wealthiest.

The Tories claimed their 1% measure was about ‘fairness’. All the while they were lying through their teeth in order to attack not only the vulnerable and unemployed but also the very people whose side they claim to be on: low-paid workers, parents, people exploited by greedy employers and by greedy landlords. They exploit Josef Goebbels’ ‘Big Lie’ principle shamelessly.

Some might argue that these irredeemably vicious and deceitful ‘leaders’ belong in prison for what they are doing to ordinary people and to the most vulnerable in our society. At the very least, they belong in the electoral dustbin for good.

Hear Hear

Great photo of Pinnochio skywalker and very apt all they know how to do is wrap their lies up with a bit of spin for good measure.